Fun with student loan refinancing

I have a student loan through the Dept of Ed, serviced by MOHELA. The original amount was ~$27k at 6.125% (includes 0.25% for auto pay discount) for 25 yrs. I realize that the 25 yrs was a big shiny hook to get me to pay more interest, but had to do it at the time. Have about 19 yrs left to pay on it with a payment of $187.17.

I tried to get them to reduce my interest rate for being a good on time payer and never being late (which is what Sallie Mae/Navient did after paying on their loan for 2 years with no problem). MOHELA just came back with their same response of the only discount available was through auto pay. Whoop dee doo!

Now I'm in a position to pay more and the way their over payments of the normal payment are applied is this:

quote:

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Each time you satisfy a bill due, we will automatically advance your next payment due date and your billing statement will indicate a payment is not required for that bill. You may still continue to make payments to decrease your total interest cost and pay your loan off sooner.

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It just reads very oddly and I'm tired of dealing with them.

So I decide to try to refinance with SoFi. I put my info in and the best rate they can give me is ~5.3% at a 5 yr payback. It sucked but I wanted to get away from MOHELA. I saw that you can add a cosigner, so I added the wife on there and it reduced my rate to 4.115% (3.865% w/auto pay). Sweet, this will reduce my interest and force me to get this thing paid off.

I get a call from SoFi letting me know that everything has been approved and I should be receiving a welcome packet soon. They also let me know that the loan servicer will be....MOHELA! So instead of just reducing my interest rate a little and them still making a good bit of money (which they already have off of me), they get charged a fee from SoFi for brokering the "new" loan.

Having a lot of experience dealing with student loans, mine and my wife's, it's no surprise that some people are just giving these loan servicers the middle finger.

Thank you for reading my story.